


Background Radiation

by wildwestwind



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Existential Horror, Gen, Horror, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Psychological Horror, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), The Beholding Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), The Desolation Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), The Lonely Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), The Vast Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), The Web Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:16:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27044125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildwestwind/pseuds/wildwestwind
Summary: Sasha James notices that some things that aren't statements won't digitize, or: isn't it odd that the fear entities have had so little of an effect on human civilization?
Comments: 5
Kudos: 63





	Background Radiation

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to existentialterror for writing [the fic](https://existentialterror.tumblr.com/post/180025916949/scp-foundation-au) that inspired this one. 
> 
> And thanks to existentialterror, Kel, Celer, Clover, and Grace for their feedback.
> 
> Some artistic liberties have been taken with the design and publication date of No Man's Sky. I blame the Lukases.

JON  
[rustles papers] Right then. We’ll start. Statement of Sasha James, concerning--

SASHA  
Concerning certain topics’ failure to digitize in the Archive of the Magnus Institute.

JON  
Statement taken direct from subject, December 21, 2015. 

SASHA  
I first noticed the failure to digitize when I was typing up what should have been a digitizable statement--

JON  
Hold on. You should explain what a non-digitizable statement is.

SASHA  
Everyone who is going to hear this works at the Archive and knows perfectly well what it means when a statement is non-digitizable.

JON  
Still. For the record.

SASHA  
[sighs] Fine. 

I recently began working as an archival assistant at the Magnus Institute after the previous Archivist, Gertrude Robinson, passed away. In recent years, best practices for running an archive have changed a lot. Computers let you create digital versions of statements that you can search and tag by topic. We’re more aware of the needs of disabled researchers, which means presenting information in multiple formats, visual and audio. 

Gertrude… did not incorporate best practices. She didn’t even manage to keep all the statements off the floor. 

So we had a lot of work on our hands. 

It only became worse when we realized that certain statements… won’t digitize. If you type them into a laptop, the file won’t save. If you try to record them with any kind of remotely modern technology, the file has so many audio distortions it’s unlistenable. You can’t even summarize the statement and refer the researchers to the Archive for more details. 

Non-digitizable statements have a particular nature. None of the tiny handful of statements we know for certain are supernatural will digitize, of course, but it’s more than that. Every statement that’s conclusively someone’s drug trip, or that was given by someone with obvious schizophrenia, or that’s-- I don’t know-- just a weather balloon: all of those go into a computer fine. Anything sweet, anything heartwarming, anytime an angel appears to save someone’s pet from a chronic illness and teach everyone a valuable life lesson about sharing, that statement digitizes. 

But the ones that are weird or creepy or a little unsettling, the ones that flash through your mind when you’re walking home from work and make you really wish you carried a knife-- well, at this point I don’t bother to type up two sentences before I try to save the file. 

I first noticed the problem on my third day in the Archives, right after we discovered non-digitizable statements existed at all. I was typing up a classic digitizable statement. The statement-giver had a psychotic break but she knows, knows for certain, that she was actually being followed by a shadowy man with no hands. When I was halfway through and saved it to break for lunch, it saved fine. When I typed up the last paragraph and tried to exit, it didn’t. 

After a bit of trial and error, I discovered the offending sentence. It was the sentence where the statement-giver says that she was taken to the hospital and tried antipsychotics. When I removed the sentence, the file saved. 

The same thing happened with the next statement that mentioned antipsychotics. If I include a sentence that alludes to antipsychotics-- usually the statement-giver taking them, but not always-- the file won’t save. If I remove it and refer the researcher to the original statement for more details, the file digitizes. And if I try to audio record a statement that mentions antipsychotics, there’s so much distortion you can barely make out what I’m saying. 

And… this was weird, but I tried not to think about it too much. [laughing like it’s not quite funny] Maybe we’re haunted by a ghost that hates psychiatric medication. 

But then I noticed that antipsychotics aren’t the only thing that… won’t digitize. 

True crime, for example. If you mention sourcing information from the true crime community, you will not be able to save the file on the Archive’s computers. I have to say ‘with the help of interested amateurs.’

And it’s just… the most random things. There’s this one piece of luxury housing where there was some clickbait-y article in the Guardian about how it was the loneliest place in Britain and then construction fell through. It won’t digitize. Migraines, for some reason. The meme where the dress is either blue and black or white and gold. The entire city of Las Vegas.

I went to Las Vegas once. I missed a flight and I couldn’t get another one for two days. There are fruit machines in the airports there, did you know? People play them for hours, their luggage strewn ignored at their feet, because it would take too long to leave the airport to play.

The casinos are frantically glamorous. The lights are glitzy. Beautiful women smile with you and flirt with you and offer you drinks. It has a way of making you feel like you’re wealthy, however broke you are. It feels like time doesn’t pass inside the casinos. At 9pm or 9am there are the same vacant-eyed zombies pressing buttons at the fruit machines. 

‘Glamorous’ is a funny word. It originally referred to the fae, did you know that? A glamour was the web they wrapped around you to ensnare your senses and weaken your will before they kill you. 

The casinos make you feel wealthy, but the people in there are not. You can tell. I spent a while people watching in the casinos, because I was bored, and I wasn’t going to use the fruit machine myself. I saw a guy with holes in his clothes put thousands of dollars into the machine. Another guy on the phone with his wife, explaining that his luck was going to turn soon and then they would have the money for the rent. A woman who had three cards declined before she found one she hadn’t hit the limit on. 

Las Vegas is hot, so swelteringly hot, it almost feels like you’re on fire. 

That’s not the thing that made me give this statement. 

Yesterday I was emailing Tim about this video game we’re both into called No Man’s Sky. It’s… sort of like Minecraft in space? I know you don’t play Minecraft. You’re on a planet, and it has all of these alien plants and animals and minerals. You harvest them to build tools and houses and spaceships, and you can use the spaceships to explore the galaxy. The graphics are beautiful. 

The thing I really like about No Man’s Sky is there’s always more to explore. It’s procedurally generated, so you don’t have the limitation where someone has to individually code each individual planet. The marketing says it’s as infinite as the universe and that’s almost true. There are eighteen quintillion worlds. Someone did the math once and to 100% complete the game would take almost six hundred billion years of play.

The other thing about No Man’s Sky is that your character is the only sentient creature. There are the remains of ancient civilizations which you can raid for supplies, but you’ll never run into another player or an alien or anything more sapient than a wolf. Every change that happens to the universe comes from you. 

You spend hours building your space stations and your farms and your mines and your factories, and then you look up at the vastness of the stars, and you realize that every one of those stars is another planet just like your planet. No matter how much you play, even if you play it as a full-time job for forty years, you won’t be able to affect or even see more than a tiny fraction of the worlds. And you know that you are the only person building space stations and farms and mines and factories. Out in the bleak vastness of the universe, you will never be able to find people. Nothing but the decrepit wrecks of the species that lived once and are no more. 

If you like it, it’s meditative. If you don’t… well, it’s the loneliest game I’ve ever played. 

Tim and I chat about No Man’s Sky sometimes when we’re not at work, and we can chat about it fine. Usually, when I’m working I’m working and not talking about video games. But yesterday when I was on break I found this news article about No Man’s Sky and I emailed it to Tim to find out what he thinks. Or-- I tried to. The email didn’t send. 

[half-hysterically] I tried and I tried and while I’m at the Archive I can’t send any email that mentions No Man’s Sky.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about my trip to Las Vegas. If there’s a city that is… a haunted city, a city made by ghosts rather than people, I would believe it was Las Vegas. 

If supernatural creatures exist, you’d expect them to have an effect on our world, right? More than just mysterious murders and haunted castles and institutes like us investigating them. 

And… if something is ordinary, very few people will think of it as paranormal. Even the Magnus Archives doesn't take statements about Las Vegas. You’d have to be crazy not to assume that antipsychotics work by some physical process we don’t understand yet.

If the non-digitizable topics are paranormal, then the paranormal is pervasive. It’s not something you can avoid by not accepting mysterious coffins from strangers or only staying in well-lit alleyways or avoiding decrepit houses. Every video game you play, every medication you take, every city you live in could be as paranormal as a ghost.

And I keep thinking about how the angels digitize and the adorable pet stories digitize and the happy endings digitize and-- 

I think I’m going to go back to playing Minecraft. 

[tape clicks off]

[tape clicks on]

JON  
Statement ends. 

I waited for Sasha to leave before offering my opinion on this statement, out of a sense of… tact.

Obviously, there is no followup we can do on this statement, since it takes place in our very own Archive. Fortunately, it is very clear that Sasha is simply reading too much into the ordinary sort of software bugs we can expect with computers as old and out-of-date as the Archive’s. 

The paranormal is rare. For every possibly true statement, there are dozens of drug trips and, ah, miraculous healings by miscellaneous saints. Most of us will never encounter a true paranormal incident. Las Vegas comes by its tackiness in a… purely natural manner. 

I will speak to Tim and ask if she needs some days off. Perhaps the stress of work is getting to her.


End file.
